DIY Alternate Start - Lemmy.world
Starting my 3rd playthrough, I felt like it was time to do something completely
different. Everyone has their own head cannon, but I was struggling to envision
a life path that had me joining Constellation, doing assorted heroic and
adventurous things, and then becoming a corporate spy. For that reason, I’ve yet
to do the Ryujin faction quests. At least for me, the opposite path, from street
rat, to spy, to adventurer, made a lot more sense. So anyway. In order to make
that happen, I decided I wanted to try a non-Constellation start. I’ll get
there, eventually, but not immediately. I thought others might want to consider
this path so I’ll share how it went for me. I started the playthrough like
normal, all the way up to the initial dialog with Sarah. She’ll invite you to
join Constellation, but you have a “not ready for that” dialog option. She’ll
understand and offer you a play to stay while you mull it over. At this point, I
just left. I had returned their ship, handed them their weird alien doodad, and
gotten paid. I did not see the need to join their fancy clubhouse. For RP
purposes, from this point forward, I did not return to The Lodge or use the
Frontier. Those choices have some costs associated with them. For starters, I no
longer had an infinite storage box for my resources, so I sold pretty much all
of those. I also didn’t have a place to sleep, so I used a sleeping bag I found
in The Well, on the upper level across from Jake’s. Most importantly, I had no
way off the planet. Job one, then, way to buy my own ride because, for me, The
Frontier did not exist. A base model Rambler, the VW Bus of starships, costs
around 57k credits. If that sounds like a lot for a starting character, it is,
but it’s not surmountable. To get the money for that, you want to have hoarded
as much as you could possibly carry from the first pirate attack and the Kreet
excursion. I wish I had hoarded more. Next you are going to want to do every
single New Atlantis side quest
[https://segmentnext.com/starfield-all-new-atlantis-side-missions/] you can.
Some of them are off-planet, and some (like the UC guard contraband one) are
locked behind inaccessible quests. This will get you tantalizingly close, but
you’ll still be maybe 12k away. Take two levels of Commerce to knock 10% off the
price of the Rambler and now you’re within spittin’ distance. From here, you can
try a little larceny, but there isn’t much to steal lying around New Atlantis. I
made it up by jumping the walls and exploring the surrounding area. Sadly, while
there are things to see and do, I didn’t find any pirate compounds or Spacer
groups to take out and loot. And, while the planet is settled, the fauna are
still deadly to a low-level character. Worse, they use up irreplaceable bullets
to kill them. In one rather unexpected encounter, I ran into a freakin’
terrormorph fighting it out with some Va’ruun Heretics. I thought I’d wipe them
all and loot their corpses, but it ended up costing almost all of my ammo to
finish off the terrormorph, and the heretics had nowhere near enough to make up
for the loss. Lesson learned: avoid the wildlife. The juice ain’t worth the
squeeze. I was also accosted by a squad of Ecliptic looking for me due to my
“Hunted” trait. They had a lot of good loot on them, and that really helped.
Sadly, for whatever reason, I couldn’t steal their ship, which would have been a
nice shortcut. I finished off the last few credits just collecting resources
outside the walls and getting that second level of Commerce. I was able to buy
my Rambler in just under 5 hours of game time. I was 8th level and lifted off
the planet with about 2500 credits and 200 rounds of assorted ammunition. If I
had anything to do over again, I would have hoarded more on Kreet and I would
have completely avoided the terrormorph (as most people would). So now, I’m free
to explore the galaxy on my own terms. I’ll have to keep my inventory low until
I build an outpost or go back to Constellation. My selection of companions is
also drastically gimped, but manageable. I’m looking forward to this. I think
it’s going to be an interesting run.
